Microsoft Withheld Crucial Information

B. Withholding Crucial Technical Information

90. Microsoft knew that Netscape needed certain critical technical information and assistance in order to complete its Windows 95 version of Navigator in time for the retail release of Windows 95. Indeed, Netscape executives had made a point of requesting this information, especially the so-called Remote Network Access (“RNA”) API, at the June 21 meeting.

    
    

    As was discussed above, the Microsoft representatives at the meeting had responded that the haste with which Netscape received the desired technical information would depend on whether Netscape entered the so-called “special relationship” with Microsoft.

    
    

    Specifically, Microsoft representative J. Allard had told Barksdale that the way in which the two companies concluded the meeting would determine whether Netscape received the RNA API immediately or in three months.

    
    

91. Although Netscape declined the special relationship with Microsoft, its executives continued, over the weeks following the June 21 meeting, to plead for the RNA API. Despite Netscape’s persistence, Microsoft did not release the API to Netscape until late October, i.e., as Allard had warned, more than three months later.

    
    

    The delay in turn forced Netscape to postpone the release of its Windows 95 browser until substantially after the release of Windows 95 (and Internet Explorer) in August 1995. As a result, Netscape was excluded from most of the holiday selling season.

    
    

92. Microsoft similarly withheld a scripting tool that Netscape needed to make its browser compatible with certain dial-up ISPs. Microsoft had licensed the tool freely to ISPs that wanted it, and in fact had cooperated with Netscape in drafting a license agreement that, by mid July 1996, needed only to be signed by an authorized Microsoft executive to go into effect.

    
    

    There the process halted, however. In mid-August, a Microsoft representative informed Netscape that senior executives at Microsoft had decided to link the grant of the license to the resolution of all open issues between the companies. Netscape never received a license to the scripting tool, and as a result, was unable to do business with certain ISPs for a time.

    
    

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This court case Civil Action No. 98-1232 (TPJ) retrieved on 2-06-2023, from justice.gov is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction.